Last Monday I walked into my local T-Mobile store and told the girl behind the counter to talk me into upgrading my phone. I’d spent the last few months reviewing phones and at this point was still torn between the Samsung Galaxy 4, the Samsung Note 2, the HTC One, and the newly-released SONY Xperia Z. After some serious mulling the One and Xperia Z were in a dead heat. But with the Xperia in my hand, loving the design, digging the fact that it’s water & dust-proof, and trusting its 13 megapixel camera over HTC’s “ultrapixels”, all it took was for the salesperson to say “the Xperia has a slot for SD cards, which the HTC doesn’t” for me to make my decision. I walked out of the store with the Xperia Z still in my hand.
Since then the phone has hardly left that hand! Seriously, I had scoffed a bit when reading about how SONY had engineered the phone to be “perfectly balanced”, but there it is sitting perfectly in my hand at any angle, with no part of the phone heavier than the other…”perfectly balanced” indeed. But it doesn’t just feel good in my hand; with its super thin profile, rounded edges, and glassy obsidian finish, it looks gorgeous! Bye, bye, phones that all look like the iPhone! From now on phones are actually gonna be “pretty”. That prettiness extends to the glorious 5-inch Bravia Mobile-enabled screen, the stripped-down layout of the mostly bloatware-free version of Android Jellybean running on the device, and the design of the UI & its components.
Like I said, one of the main reasons I went with the Xperia over the HTC One is that I just don’t buy HTC’s whole “ultrapixel” scam. I’ve seen photos taken with the One in real life, and they look awful! I don’t know where the reviewers get their photos from, but I don’t believe they were actually taken by a One. The photos I’ve taken with the Xperia Z since purchasing it on the other hand are pretty much exactly what I’d expect from a 13 megapixel shooter with a bunch of crazy camera-like settings. I can’t say much for the One’s ultrapixels other than my photos look a lot better than my One-owning friends’ do on Facebook and Instagram, which is all that really matters when we’re talking about an in-phone camera.
If you couldn’t tell, I’ve absolutely fallen in love with SONY’s Xperia Z. I sometimes find myself whispering sweet nothings to it. And the other day I said “I love you…” out loud which a passerby thought was intended for them until I added “…smartphone.” They were none-too-pleased. I on the other hand remain nothing but pleased with the Xperia. It’s slick-looking, super fast (rocking a 1.5 GHz Quad-core Snapdragon S4 processor), without a trace of lag-time in button-presses & swipes, mighty in battery power, and with 16GB internal memory plus the SD card from my old phone transplanted it’s a storage BEAST! And that’s not even touching the waterproofing, which I don’t plan on testing out for myself any time soon!
I love you smartphone. I love you Xperia Z.
